Trustee Andrew Duff aspired to work for Piper Jaffray & Hopwood as a teenager and that dream never went away. He was hired by Piper after graduating from Tufts. After 34 years, he's still there and has served as its chairman and CEO for more than a decade.

In February 2014, I found myself seated with 20 other students who had likely asked themselves the same question. Yet despite fleeting reservations and a lot of careful thinking about what I could learn from a class focused on what humans don’t know and can’t prove with science, I was convinced that this was the place to be.

Three years ago, Mitch Kieffer’s military SUV was attacked in Iraq. After dozens of surgeries and procedures, he is still dogged by chronic, debilitating pain. But that hasn’t stopped Kieffer ’07 from becoming the ultimate warrior.

A bright yellow pickup truck is parked on the third floor of a downtown Minneapolis office building, and to a stranger it doesn't fit into the maze of cubicles that stretch as far as the eye can see. "Ryan Lumber and Coal Co.," reads the lettering on the truck. "Everything to Build Anything."

The winter of 2013-14 was the coldest in 35 years according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. But with temperatures after today predicted to be above freezing, it's only a matter of time before scenes like these show up all over campus.

Every Friday at 9 a.m. the freshmen class, which consisted of approximately 500 students, was required to attend an hour-long convocation in the small auditorium – an obligation that was obeyed with less than little enthusiasm. No one wanted to be there; however, what occurred one beautiful autumn morning is something that I will never forget.